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Two years ago, Shaun Downey, a Toronto painter, hooked up with a friend of a friend over MySpace and invited her to sit for a portrait. “She just had this kind of strange beauty,” he recalled recently. “I knew, when I saw her, that this was someone I wanted to paint.”

Good instinct. Two years later, Downey, 32, entered the portrait of 17-year-old Dearbhail Bracken-Roche in the annual Portrait Award competition at the National Portrait Gallery in London, England. Not only was it among 58 chosen for an exhibition at the gallery from a field of 2,177, it was plucked as its lead advertising image, appearing on the cover of brochures, catalogues, in magazine and newspaper ads, and in Tube stations.

But that's not all: When the exhibition opened in June, Downey's portrait appeared draped on a 9-metre-high banner at the museum's entrance on Trafalgar Square, heralding the exhibition in the most public way possible.

In an odd twist of fate, Bracken-Roche, now 20, is living in London, working as a model. “Before I even knew the banner was up, a woman came up to me on the bus,” she said.

“She asked: ‘Are you the girl?'” Bracken-Roche said on the phone from London, laughing. “I had no idea what she was talking about, so when she explained, I just turned so, so red. I think she thought she had really frightened me.”

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Downey had told Bracken-Roche he was entering the portrait in the competition. “I thought, ‘No big deal, whatever,'” she said. Not quite. The image has imbued upon Bracken-Roche a curious kind of fame: people politely requesting photos, asking questions. “I try not to go there too much anymore,” she says. “I don't want to seem like I'm full of myself.”

An artist's preview of the show, with Downey's portrait already festooning the gallery's facade, opened in June. Downey and his wife, Kelly Grace, arrived that morning on an overnight flight from Toronto. Giddy with anticipation, they rushed to the square.

“When I saw it, I nearly fell over,” said Downey. “We hadn't slept at all. It was a hot, brutal day; we were roasting. But there was no way I was waiting. I had to see it, right then.”

For Downey, it's a satisfying vindication. Blue Coco, the portrait's title — “Coco” is the name Bracken-Roche uses while modelling, and its cool hue is derived from the vintage wall paper Downey acquired for a backdrop — was the third in a series of portraits in the same vein. “I really wasn't having much success with it,” he recalled.

Frustrated, he put Blue Coco away for a while. Then, while moving house, he came across it and re-engaged. “There were boxes everywhere,” he said. “My wife kept saying ‘You have to finish that now!'”

The splash in London has given him some much-needed momentum. “The recession was really hard on me,” he said. “I really started to doubt myself.”

At the preview, Downey and Grace were joined by Bracken-Roche and her parents, who were visiting the United Kingdom. A crowd of spectators eagerly took snapshots of Bracken-Roche and her likeness, which she had not seen before the advertising campaign emerged. (“I wasn't sure about it at first,” she says. “But I like it. It's me in a different time; I was nervous, unsure of myself. He really captured a feeling.”)

Downey and Bracken-Roche were told that, after the show ends, they might be able to keep the banner. In that, Bracken-Roche is happy to defer to the artist. “I don't know what I would do with a 30-foot banner of my face,” she said. “No offence to Shaun, but I don't want to see myself that much.”

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